Talk:Viviette (Ainslee's serial)

Reviews

 * The Nation, 8 June 1916: This is advertised as "a dramatic little story for summer reading." The experienced novel-buyer must nave long since grown suspicious of the article offered for a "summer market." Publishers have assured us also that there is no longer a silly season, that the famous incumbent of the hammock or the veranda-chair prefers Bergson to Oppenheim, and the latest research in Egyptology to the latest frou-frou of seasonable romance. Yet "summer reading" is still a phrase to conjure with, apparently. It must be admitted that Mr. Locke has done something this time which is sufficiently simple, not to say silly, for the emptiest hour and the emptiest head. The story be tells meets a first requirement in being quite conventional and commonplace in substance, and a second requirement, or rather a possible desideratum, in providing here or there a fresh turn or twist of the action, a little fillip of mechanical interest, such as in the eyes of the movie-public constitutes "punch." Here are Viviette, the coquette; Dick, the sturdy, plodding, country-bred brother; Austin, the brilliant, successful, city-honored brother; the dowager mother, who favors the brilliant chap. Both of these men are in love with Viviette; Viviette flirting with both, playing with fire, and all that; excursions and alarums; Dick, in a stage-scene with a set of ancient duelling pistols, attempts to do for Austin. Luckily, a flash in the pan. Austin, horrified, loves Dick, and might be willing to leave Viviette to him if he thought she would be safe. But why shouldn't he take a notion to shoot her some time? Dick cannot think why, is about to go into exile at Vancouver, when Viviette suddenly, after being betrothed to Austin for a few hours, decides that she loves Dick alone, and will go with him. The punch comes at the moment when Viviette announces, "I'm a primitive woman, and Dick's a primitive man—and, thank God! we understand each other, and love each other as primitive people do!"—and clinches the matter by crying: "I want you to love me strongly and fiercely for ever and ever—and I'll be a great wife to you, and if I ever fail ... if I ever play fast and loose with your love again—I want you to kill me." We suggest that Dick loses a chance for a bit of really masculine punch by not promising.